30 June 2013

Martin Winter: A farewell to Europe's stars

Süddeutsche Zeitung's Brussels correspondent writes that there is some good that has come from the crisis which has now plagued the continent for five years: It forces the Europeans to leave the world of wishful thinking and arrive in the realm of reality.

Translated from the German

Never before has the European Union been faced more directly with the question of what they have in common and what separates them. The crisis reaches far beyond its financial and economic impact: The fundamental belief, according to which Europe is inevitably evolving towards a more federal structure, has been shaken. 

Among the leaders of the EU, a certain realism has spread. They have increasingly less desire to give Brussels more power and responsibilities. This reform fatigue is at least partially attributed to the fact that the market pressure has eased on politics, but this time the refusal is more fundamental. Usually crises in Europe have facilitated reform efforts. This time, however, the catharsis that Brussels was hoping for has not happened. 

German chancellor Angela Merkel has also embarked on this new route of keeping things static, even if for quite some time she had flirted with the idea of using the crisis to instigate a push for treaty changes. Nowadays only the strictly necessary is done both to save the currency and banks as well as get the economy going; Brussels however does not receive any new powers.

From the Commission's and the Parliament's as well as the hard core of European integrationists' perspective, with this policy the Member States are letting a historic opportunity pass by. Some countries, most notably the United Kingdom, however, feel that the European project has already gone too far. Any major attempt at reform would therefore probably end with steps backwards towards more disintegration rather than progressive reform.

Full article (in German)

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